First, I just made some additions and corrections to my previous blog post on William's singing with the Pacific Boychoir Academy.  Please go back and read Spring Serenade Concert for William for more details on the performances, and my jaw-dropping reaction to the beauty of the singing (not as a parent, but as a high school musician and former season subscriber to the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Symphony).  
 
If you have a chance to hear live the PBA, or any well respected classical music organization in your locale, I encourage you to go.  Your ears will thank you for the gift of great, moving, intellectually involving music. Your soul with thank you for the opportunity to rejoice and thank God in a different way at such a concert.  Recordings are nice, but being in a interior space (concert hall, opera house, theater, church/cathedral)  for a live performance is an inestimable joy. It is a cliche, but one that needs to be repeated: listening to great music live is more than passive enjoyment or multi-tasking distraction, but also a way to be in deep and focused prayer to God.  To thank him for the gift of the music, his gift of Creation (the musicians and composers), and the gift of our senses; but also to meditate on all the grace and gifts the Holy Spirit has given The People of God.  When music is good (and it does not necessarily have to be masses, chants, or liturgical arias to qualify as "good") it is an opportunity to enter into contemplative prayer with God.  To rest in the lap of God, listen to the Holy Spirit, and enter into a period of perfect communion with God; a brief Shalom moment as it were. To be loved.

The past few years I have been so busy with various portions of my life, that I have forgotten what was once the very focus of my life... this obvious grace of music.  It is one thing to actively participate in the singing at mass, and quite another to enter into a prayer/fugue state of deep contemplation while listening to "Over Yonder" or "Gloria: at a concert. I have been spending so much time, and trying so hard  the last ten years to first be a better husband, father, Christian, spinal cord injury recovery  patient... and then a good Catholic Christian, that I occasionally forget to let go and let the gifts, graces, and presence of God wash over me.  And that is embarrassing or sinful; a potential "4 O'clock in the Box" situation. 

I fail to luxuriate in the love and mercy of the Father/Son/Holy Spirit through music at my own peril.  A lesson I thought I had down cold after an experience in college lead me to write an appreciation of rock music (specifically The Who) through the prism of the classic required reading text of higher education through the ages, The Confessions of St. Augustine.

Occasionally, a bolt reaches me and I spontaneously respond, and then can communicate these ideas to my son.  William, through whom God worked the grace of my conversion to Catholicism (upcoming "Reason #1A Why I Converted to Roman Catholicism:  My Son William Enrolls in Catholic School"), has brought me the gift of listening live to the angelic boychoir music and allowing me these instances of spiritual truth and beauty.   More importantly, his warm, innocent, and sensitive-spiritual nature allows me to learn as I parent him. 

This morning, as we were finishing the last details and packing William for his first trip with the PBA, he came up to me and thanked me for supporting his singing. It was a true, spontaneous utterance of appreciation.  For once I did not let the moment pass to amplify on the love. I responded by telling him that it is no problem, this is what parents do... out of love, and to explore activities with our children til we find what they are good at.  Because what we are good at is a gift from God, and it is our responsibility as parents to nurture that gift.  And it is up to each of us to make the most of those god-given gifts, to share with people and make them happy.  But mostly as a way to thank/worship/glorify God.  William asked if that meant kids alone have that responsibility, and I said no... grown-ups have the duty to take joy in the gifts of God, and continue to improve them, share them, to the glory of God. That is grace, unexpectedly getting an unearned gift from God.  He then said, "I understand that.  Now I really want to continue getting better in my singing!"  I could see on his face he meant/thought that "it gives pleasure to master this hard thing (singing) and this exceedingly hard music but beautiful music, and not only that people like to hear us sing, but it is a way for me to pray and be with God. And continuing to perform and get better is a way for me to say 'Thank You God.'  Neat."

I looked down at him and smiled, thinking (in my best interior Sean Connery sotto voce), "Thus ends the lesson."